Pioneering UC San Diego psychiatrist Lewis Judd dies at 88

Judd served as chairman of the university's Department of Psychiatry for 36 years, leading it through a transformation period in the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders.

Judd served as chairman of the university's Department of Psychiatry for 36 years, leading it through a transformation period in the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders. (UC San Diego School of Medicine)

Gary Robbins

Lewis L. Judd, a pioneering UC San Diego psychiatrist who became the nation’s top mental health official and helped convince the government to invest in the study of brain biology as a way of figuring out how to treat diseases like depression, died on Dec. 16 in San Diego. He was 88.

Judd, who served as chair of the university’s psychiatry department for 36 years, passed away from natural causes, said his wife, Patricia Judd, a UC San Diego psychiatry professor.

The late Judd was a “forceful advocate for pushing psychiatry beyond its decidedly charismatic, but often controversial, past to its empirical present as a data-driven, hard-charging neuroscience,” said David Brenner, the university’s vice chancellor for health sciences.

“He was an early and vocal leader of the idea that mental disorders, such as depression, were the result of neurological and biological dysfunction, and argued that they could be effectively treated with appropriate, rigorously developed psycho-pharmaceuticals.”

Judd’s viewpoint represented a break with the days when psychiatrists focused on psychoanalysis as a way treating mental health issues rather than examining what might be wrong biologically, UC San Diego said in a remembrance of his career and life.

The university pointed to a moment in 1988 when Judd told Parade magazine that depression is “a real disease, just as a heart attack is real. Depression produces physical, emotional and thinking symptoms. Without treatment, depression can last for years and can even end in suicide.”

At the time, many people considered depression to be an “act” that could be vanquished by will power.

Judd was born in Los Angeles on Feb. 10, 1930. His father was an obstetrician-gynecologist, and his mother was a homemaker.

The young Judd earned his medical degree at UCLA in 1958, went on to service in the military, then joined the UCLA psychiatry faculty. He stayed there until 1970, when researcher Arnold J. Mandell persuaded him to join the faculty of UC San Diego’s one-year old psychiatry department.

Lewis Judd “prided himself on seeing the department of psychiatry as a family,” said Igor Grant, the department’s current chairman.

“In keeping with that he knew all the faculty by name, and tried to also to be familiar with their families. He was a caring mentor to junior faculty and prided himself of their successes. And in his family life he was a caring, loving father and grandfather. It is uncommon in deed that such qualities of leadership and humanity are combined in one person. We miss him for all these many attributes.”

Judd’s wife says her husband was also Renaissance man, with interests ranging from gourmet cooking to fine wine to running to music to the tragi-comedy that was the former San Diego Chargers.

But the department was the center of Judd’s life — except from 1987-90, when he served as director of the National Institute of Mental Health, where he expanded many programs, including efforts to understand schizophrenia and mental disorders in children and adolescents.

He returned to UC San Diego after leaving NIMH, and resumed serving as chair, a position he held until he stepped down in 2013.

At the time, he told an interviewer, “The thing I’m most proud of is how psychiatry is becoming increasingly recognized as a real biomedical science. It used to be disdained. A broken mind wasn’t as real as a broken bone.

“We lionized physical medicine, but dismissed brain biology, which has an enormous affect upon not just our behavior, but our bodies as well.”

The university said in a statement that Judd is survived by his wife, Patricia, daughters Stephanie Judd, a clinical psychologist; Catherine Judd, a professor of English literature; and Allison Fee, an occupational therapist; sons-in- law Cliff Greenblatt and Frank Fee; and grandchildren Helena, Henry, Spencer, Miles and Jack.

Campus officials also said the Lewis L. Judd Recognition Fund has been established to explore mental disorders:. https://go.ucsd.edu/2QIhc0a